Thu, 03 Nov 2011
Work on important problems
A friend pointed me to a
transcript
of Richard Hamming's motivational
speech, "You and your research." In the speech, Hamming (the famous inventor of
the Hamming code, an early and vital error-correction algorithm) discusses points
that make a researcher generate important results for the field. (I think it was Blake who sent me the link. I seem to have no idea how I found it initially.)
I'll now take a moment and mis-quote Hamming, pretending he's giving advice to activists rather than scientists:
If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work. It’s perfectly obvious. Great activists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them. Let me warn you, ‘important problem’ must be phrased carefully. The three outstanding problems in physics, in a certain sense, were never worked on while I was at Bell Labs. By important I mean guaranteed a Nobel Prize and any sum of money you want to mention. We didn’t work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. They are not important problems because we do not have an attack. It’s not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is what makes a problem important. When I say that most activists don’t work on important problems, I mean it in that sense. The average activist, so far as I can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes will not be important and he also doesn’t believe that they will lead to important problems.
He tells great stories, and you should read the transcript. Here, however, is a summary of his points:
- A handful of people do excellent science repeatedly. It does not boil down to pure luck (though luck does remain important). Courage and hard-work are huge factors.
- As you grow older, you will be tempted to only work on large problems. Instead, Shannon urges us to "continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow."
- Necessity is the mother of invention. When you have a resource constraint, you will be forced to address it, perhaps in a novel and generally-useful way.
- Be committed to your research question, not your current results. Take note of the places where your data disagree with your theory. You'll need those places later.
- When you see a good attack, drop everything and focus on it until you find out if it will work.
- If you work with your office as an open door, within a decade you will know where the field has moved-to in a way that closed-door workers will not.
- When solving a problem, consider how it can be "characteristic of a class" of problem rather than just one isolated problem.
- You must become good at presenting ("selling") your work as well as your motivations.
- Avoid the personality defect of wanting total control. This prevents other people from helping you. Generally, learn how to use the system. That includes being willing to appear to conform.
- Avoid the personality defect of excessive ego assertion. "Which do you want to be? The person who changes the system or the person who does first−class science?"
- Gain the personality boon of seeing the positive side of things, even constraints. Especially self-set constraints.
- Know thyself.
The Q&A, and the full speech, get the blood pumping. Give it a read.
